Yet another researcher is accusing religious right groups of misusing his work.

John Horgan, a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, yesterday published an article in Scientific American calling various religious right groups to task for what he says is a distortion of his work:

. . . Christian homophobes have misused my writings on the biology of homosexuality, particularly “Gay Genes, Revisited,” published in Scientific American in November 1995. In it I reported on weaknesses in the claims of scientists—and particularly the geneticist Dean Hamer, “discoverer” of the “gay gene”—that homosexuality has a genetic basis. (I've continued beating up on Hamer over the years for exaggerating the links between specific genes and behaviors; see for example this essay.)

Anti-gay Christians cite “Gay Genes, Revisited” to make the case that homosexuality is not hardwired; people with homosexual inclinations can change their behavior and even minds through therapeutic interventions. See, for example, the references to “Gay Genes, Revisited” on these Mormon and Catholic sites.

Horgan was saying that he wasn't making a case against the lgbt equality (which religious right groups have done with his piece) but was saying that sexuality is more fluid than the simplistic notions that people are either gay or heterosexual.

Personally I am in favor of Horgan's opinion that sexuality is fluid. I also believe the phrase “gay gene” is a straw man argument, or a buzzword perpetrated by the religious right such as the phrases “radical homosexual activist” or “protecting marriage.”

But the most important thing to remember is that Horgan is yet another researcher accusing the religious right of distorting his/her work. By my count, he is number 11.For the record, there is already:

Six researchers of a 1997 Canadian study (Robert S. Hogg, Stefan A. Strathdee, Kevin J.P. Craib, Michael V. Shaughnessy, Julio Montaner, and Martin T. Schehter), who complained in 2001 that religious right groups were distorting their work to claim that gay men have a short life span.

The authors of the book Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States (Professors Richard J. Wolitski, Ron Stall, and Ronald O. Valdiserri), who complained that their work was being distorted by Focus on the Family.

University of Utah professor Lisa Diamond, who complained that NARTH (the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality), a group that also shares board members with the ACPED, distorted her research on sexual orientation.

Dr. Carol Gilligan, Professor of Education and Law at New York University, who complained that former Focus on the Family head James Dobson misrepresented her research to attack LGBT families.

Dr. Kyle Pruett, Ph.D., a professor of child psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, who has also complained that Focus on the Family distorted his work.

Dr. Robert Spitzer, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, who has consistently complained that religious right groups distorted his study to claim that the LGBT orientation is easily changeable.

Judith Stacey, Professor of Sociology at New York University, who has had to, on more than one occasion, cry foul over how religious right groups distorted her work on LGBT families.

Greg Remafedi, Professor at the University of Minnesota, who has complained several times about how religious right groups such as the American College of Pediatricians and PFOX have distorted his work, all to no avail. The American College of Pediatricians refused his request to remove his work from their site.

In light of the Prop 8 decision last week and lawyer David Boies's eloquently put take down of religious right head Tony Perkins on Face the Nation about how religious right groups deal in fear and phony data regarding the lgbt community, these complaints of scientific inaccuracies need to be brought out to a wider audience.

Remember that it is these groups which the news media legitimizes by pushing them as the “pro-family” opposition without making people aware of their history of duplicity when it comes to lgbt research.

We need to understand that religious right groups and spokespeople don't deal with concrete ideas, but abstract illusions.

They say that “every child should have a right to a mother and a father,” while ignoring that the fact that while every child does have a mother and a father, not every child is born into a home with both a mother and a father and that these children do well when they are given love and support.

They claim that it is the lgbt community who are causing the most damage to American families while ignoring the real issues like poverty, socioeconomic inequalities, and lack of good health information

They divert everyone's attentions to some candy coated vision in the clouds so no one notices as they handicap the lgbt comunity at the knees.

Editor's note – here is an added bonus. One of the people distorting Horgan's work, John R. Diggs,
is an old hat when it comes to misusing research to demonize the lgbt community. This post goes into detail about his highly flawed piece, The Health Risks of Gay Sex.

8 Responses
to “Eleventh researcher complains that the religious right distorted his work”

The more important distinctionis that most of the people who misrepresent the science claim to interpret it as saying that there is no biological component to sexual orientation whatsoever.
Some science indicates a genetic component, other indicates prenatal hormonal or other prenatal development, some implicate some mechanism involving birth order.
As you point out, some indicates a predisposition for something other than 100% heterosexuality, whether that is a locked in 100% homosexuality or something more fluid.
And of course, responsible science is, at this point, mute regarding the question of whether all homosexuality is the same – whether there may be different things going on causing different results which social forces clump together as “homosexuality” – in other words whether a burly, hairy, macho, 100 top man has been predisposed by the same factors that affect a slim, hairless, effeminate artsy 100% bottom, or any of the other variations we see in men, not to mention the question of whether what predisposes same-sex attraction in women has anything whatsoever in common with what does so in men.
Scientists tend to (correctly, but politically naively in cases) answer the question “Is there a gay gene?” with a solid “there is no evidence for it” but would usually answer very differently if asked if there was evidence of biological factors in non-heterosexuals.

There is a very simple rule which I think the media should adopt:If a self-proclaimed “Christian” deliberately engages in lying or misrepresentation of fact or evidence, then their claim to being a “Christian” should be challenged.

HeckI’d settle for a media policy along the lines of never going back to a source that has been shown to lie about or misrepresent significant points of whatever they claim to be experts at.
They can be Christian all they want… just not on national television or print.
Or even better, though hugely unlikely, “Now we go to Tony Perkins of the American Family Institute, who, as you may recall, has lied to us about gay issues on several previous occasions. For details go to our website. Good to have you with us Tony.”

I don’t understand how a person can claim that sexuality is so fluid
but then claim that people can’t become “ex-gay” or change their sexual orientation or behavior. If it’s that fluid then why couldn’t ex-gay “therapies” not be effective and a good option for those who are unhappy with being homosexual?
Note: I’m happily gay. I think ex-gay “therapy” is snake oil bunk and dangerous and I don’t think sexual orientation is nearly as fluid as seems to be the new fad to claim.

Well it if is fluidthen by definition, ex-gay “therapies” have to be failures, no?
Do ex-gay “therapies” not claim a “cure”? If sexuality is fluid, then there is no “cure”, since it changes. And continues to change. And continues to change. The “cure” might only “work” for one moment in time.

Good pointsThe available evidence suggests that there may be multiple factors–genetic, hormonal, psychological–and that they may be present in different combinations in different individuals. But the empirical evidence suggests that, whatever the factors in play, for most people, sexuality is a deep-seated aspect of their humanity, and highly stable over a lifetime. To the extent that it is fluid, it is so for a small minority.
Re the variations in men, your examples may hew a bit too closely to stereotype. Sometimes the little guys are tigers and the big, burly guys are pussycats… Real people are complicated!
Still, I have found the obsession with causation a bit perplexing, if understandable. Don’t people deserve human rights regardless? Religion is a deep-seated aspect of individual identity that is nevertheless characterized to some extent by choice, and yet is frequently a category included in nondiscrimination laws.
My 2 cents.
Peace,
noahsdad